Chapter 207 The other side of the ocean
United States Washington.
Martin Van Buren should be regarded as one of the worst American presidents in history. There was an economic crisis when he took office. After that, France and Mexico continued to increase their military strength, forcing the United States to join the regional military competition.
Historically, the U.S. military has maintained a very low number of troops and did not begin to expand until the outbreak of World War I.
But now the United States has to support an army of 100,000 people while it is facing an economic crisis.
Maybe God is really blessing this country. First, Friedrich List came to the United States to preside over economic reforms. The core of which was to use foreigners' money to save the lives of the United States.
This trick really worked, and it immediately stopped the outflow of precious metals from the United States. Although his reputation suffered some losses, Americans in this era are known as barbarians. As long as he can save the American economy, he doesn't care if others call him Arati. , or Genghis Khan.
Afterwards, serious natural disasters and food crises broke out in Europe, and the United States teamed up with Russia to successfully harvest European leeks. At this time, Friedrich List proposed the "Moses Plan", whose main purpose was to extradite those wealthy Egyptians to the United States.
At this time, Egypt's internal and external troubles, coupled with Muhammad Ali's cruelty, made many Egyptian dignitaries eager to leave this ghost place.
The United States can send a fleet to pick up those powerful people and their treasures. If this plan can take shape, it will add a valuable asset to the United States.
In fact, when Friedrich List first proposed this plan, he did not expect to receive such a large deposit. Martin Van Buren had ordered the fleet to set sail to save the piggy banks.
But Friedrich List was actually opposed to it. He felt that it was enough to just pay a deposit, and the fleet could wait until the situation became clearer before dispatching.
After all, it would be best to move those piggy banks onto the American ship, but if the fleet is lost as a result, it will be more than worth the gain.
As a businessman, Friedrich List was unwilling to take risks, but as a president, Martin Van Buren was even more unwilling to lose credibility.
Due to the impact of the economic crisis, strikes and protests by American workers continued. At first, Martin Van Buren took a tough stance and asked the army to suppress them with force.
However, the American people were full of martial virtue, and the army at that time couldn't even pay their troops, so it naturally collapsed.
So Martin Van Buren announced without restraint that the U.S. government would accept the people's opinions and adopt a ten-hour working day.
Just after the workers' strike was quelled, the conflict between the North and the South in the United States has escalated again. Northern factory owners wanted higher tariffs, but Southern slaveholders were unwilling to accept it.
Because they know very well that once the tariffs are raised, they will only be able to buy the garbage produced by the Yankees. The originally lucrative export trade will become useless due to countervailing tariff barriers.
In the midst of this dilemma, his Secretary of State, Friedrich List, came up with an idea that would allow the South to switch to poppy cultivation while banning poppy cultivation in the North.
Such an increase in tariffs would not only protect the interests of northern industrial owners, but also allow southern slave owners to suffer less economic losses.
Although people nowadays always like to start with slavery when studying the American Civil War, the fundamental reason is still the conflict between northern factory owners and southern farmers, and the struggle between an agricultural country and an industrial country.
The climate in the United States is very suitable for the growth of opium, and the vast land and sparse population make it easy for farms to grow on a large scale. But precisely because the land is so vast and sparsely populated, it is almost impossible to give the south the privilege of growing certain crops.
Although the opium business is profitable, not everyone needs it, and as the scale expands and production increases, prices are bound to fall.
Those southern guys must have thought of something that came to mind so easily.
In fact, due to the tight price of opium in recent years and the deep economic crisis in the United States, many opium plantations have appeared in the southern United States under the advice of Friedrich List.
The production of opium in the United States is enough to meet domestic demand, but due to the relationship with the United Kingdom, it has been unable to open foreign markets, so the opium planting area has not further expanded.
Martin Van Buren hoped that the North and the South would stop quarreling and deal with the outside world together, defeat France and Mexico first, and dominate North America before talking about other things.
However, the North and the South had serious differences over the ownership of Texas and northern Mexico.
The South hoped to establish slave states in these places, and the North was naturally opposed to it. At this time, Martin Van Buren stood up and openly opposed Texas becoming a slave state.
From Martin Van Buren's perspective, he was maintaining the balance of power between the two sides and preventing civil strife.
However, in the eyes of southern slave owners, this was a blatant violation of the constitution, because according to the "Missouri Compromise" passed by the United States in 1820, the new states located south of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude should be slave states.
For a time, the name of "unconstitutional president" spread throughout the United States, and Martin Van Buren could only stand up and publicly apologize, saying that he would abide by the Constitution.
But the northern factory owners were unhappy again. They refused to fight for the southern slave owners, and they did not want to waste their own money to increase the strength of their opponents.
As a result, northern factory owners asked the federal government to cut military spending, limit the number of troops, stop hostilities with France and Mexico, and turn to Oregon.
American immigrants have been entering Oregon since 1830. The local indigenous Indians were weak and unable to stop the powerful white colonists.
However, the main problem facing Oregon at this time was the British colonial government of Canada. Although there are not many British colonists in Oregon as a whole, it is still nominally a two-state co-governance situation.
The actions of the northern factory owners will most likely arouse the anger of the British, which will make the situation of the United States even worse.
Naturally, Martin Van Buren would not agree with this reckless approach. He could only work hard to maintain the situation in the United States amidst the condemnation from both the North and the South.
If there was any order he had that was popular with the American people, it was the Seminole War, which was aimed at driving out the Indians.
In order to win the support of the people and Congress, Martin Van Buren fabricated a lot of Indian atrocities out of thin air. It is said that they burned, killed, looted, and committed all kinds of evil. They often attacked white villages, killing men, stealing property, abducting women, and letting children join shamanism.
There are also Indians who like to eat human flesh, drink human blood, sacrifice to evil gods, and even curse and kill white colonists.
Under the vilification of the U.S. government, Indians are robbers, devils, and disrespectful people.
Although this kind of propaganda was outrageous, it was highly accepted by all classes in the United States because they all needed a legal reason to continue killing and expelling Indians.
With the conspiracy of the U.S. government and the American people, the Indians in the United States began their most miserable century.